


could be better (could be worse)

by jdphoenix



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Episode: s01e14 T.A.H.I.T.I., F/M, Soulmate-Identifying Timers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-23
Updated: 2016-02-23
Packaged: 2018-05-22 18:28:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,042
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6090067
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jdphoenix/pseuds/jdphoenix
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s not ticking down anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	could be better (could be worse)

**Author's Note:**

> I rewatching 2x10 and obviously had to cheer myself up somehow and what's more happy than soulmate AUs?
> 
> Also I know I owe the internet the next chapter of "wise men say" but I owe the internet a lot of chapters.

Jemma meets Agents Garrett and Triplett in passing somewhere over the Atlantic. She’s in the middle of giving Skye yet another transfusion when introductions are made and the procedure results in a dangerous spike in blood pressure. Agent Triplett is a second pair of hands beside hers as well as a keen mind; he knows his stuff and doesn’t hesitate over her instructions the way the boys have done, saving her - and Skye - valuable seconds.

She must look a fright because Garrett and Coulson are staring when she finally has Skye stabilized. Triplett rests his hand on her shoulder only briefly before fisting it as his side and admitting he has his field med certification and would be happy to take up the watch if she’d like to rest or… He doesn’t finish the sentence and it’s very kind of him. The most she’s done to clean up since Italy was to wash Skye’s blood off her hands and change her clothes. A shower will do her good.

She glances back at Skye, so pale and lifeless, nothing at all like her usual self.

A _quick_ shower, definitely, only so as to revitalize herself.

She says a brief thanks to Agent Triplett and hurries for the back stairs before Skye can take yet another turn for the worse. Coulson and Garrett are still staring and Garrett seems, in the brief glimpse she gets of him, rather emphatically confused. Perhaps he’s unhappy his agent has offered to abandon his other duties simply to help her. She’ll have to be doubly quick then.

She starts undoing her buttons the second she hits the upper level and tears off her blouse at the same moment she enters the tiny bathroom. It’s the work of a few seconds to strip and step into the freezing cold spray and only a few minutes more before she’s finishing up her routine. She’s lifting up her hair - dawdling for the very first time under the now warm spray, just one brief moment of peace before she returns to the world outside - when she notices.

Her timer has been a comforting red light ever since its installation on her eighteenth birthday. Like most timers, the numbers have changed over time, jumping sometimes forward and sometimes backward as circumstances have altered on her or his end, and while it was often frustrating when the time grew, it was always a comfort to see the number ticking down from that point.

It’s not ticking down anymore.

It’s not even red.

It’s _green_.

It was red yesterday. She knows because Coulson allowed her to keep it uncovered for the mission, saying even as he affixed an unlit timer to his typically bare wrist that it fit with her character to be still waiting on her soul mate. And she stared at it in the waiting room, didn’t she? She watched the numbers change, using them as some small comfort while she waited to hear Skye’s fate.

“Oh my God,” she says.

Cold is creeping in. She’s sitting on the tile floor of the small shower and the water is falling in an arch that just misses her, leaving her chilly beneath it. She hastily spins the knobs, shutting it off, and then forces herself to use them for leverage to climb to her feet again.

She dresses far more slowly than she intends and, in the end, has to retreat to her bunk for a t-shirt to wear instead of her button-up because she can _not_ get the tiny buttons done in the state she’s in. Which is bad; Skye needs her in top form.

She drags a comb hastily through her hair and heads back down, taking the main stairs this time as she doesn’t trust herself on the narrow ladder.

Coulson, Ward, and Garrett were in the briefing room when she rushed past and though Fitz is in the lab, he’s too busy reading over the files Coulson forced on them to notice her. It’s just as well, Jemma’s not sure how she’d even begin to talk to someone, even Fitz, about this.

“She’s been fine,” Agent Triplett says when she reaches the medpod. “No change.”

“Good.” It’s _not_ good. It’s far from good. Skye is _dying_. Slowly, yes, but it’s happening and no change from that is very, very bad. “Thank you - for looking after her.”

“Happy to do it. You feeling better?”

He’s staring at her. Or she thinks he might be. She’s trying not to look at him directly and fears she’s coming off as rather rude. She almost wishes Coulson and Garrett were still here, they would give her something to focus on aside from her own notes on Skye’s condition and the desperate desire to inspect her-

A terrible thought pops into her head and the chart nearly slips from her hands. Triplett’s there in a heartbeat, catching it from her limp fingers and returning it to its spot. He somehow manages to take hold of her left hand and turns it over to show her timer.

“It just occurred to you it could be Garrett, huh?” he asks.

She nods slowly. Of course neither of them have timers she can compare hers to. Operatives, as a rule, don’t have timers to allow them the freedom of choosing how they will be perceived. Even the implantation of Jemma’s own timer while she was attending the Academy involved a great deal of hesitation in case she should ever decide to expand her work as an agent.

He chuckles. “Don’t worry. It’s definitely not him. It started beeping when we- well.” He shrugs. His fingers are playing with her palm, it’s very distracting. “I hope you’re not disappointed?”

“No!” That was a little more forceful than she meant it to be. He actually jumps, which says a lot for a specialist. At least she thinks he’s a specialist. Her memories of the introduction are, obviously, quite fuzzy. “I mean - _you’re_ not, are you?” That is _not_ what she meant but now that the thought of dissatisfaction is in her head, she has to ask.

He shakes his head, grinning. It’s a terribly attractive smile. “Nah. Don’t think I could be though, soulmates and all.”

Jemma doubts that’s true. There are plenty of people who are unhappy with who fate has arguably chosen for them. She and Skye have discussed the possibility more than once.

“Uh oh,” he says, his hand closing over hers to lend her warmth. “How did I ruin it?”

“No, no! It’s not you, it’s…” She looks to the bed and feels tears welling in her eyes. She _never_ cries - or nearly never, but as she just cried yesterday, it’s absurd she would be due for another so soon. “I just realized how angry Skye will be-” (and it _will_ happen, it has to-) “when she realizes she didn’t get to tease me about missing that I’d met my own soulmate.”

She’s laughing, but she still feels on the verge of tears. He wraps an arm around her shoulders and steers her out of the medpod. She’s just about to protest when she sees Ward coming off the ladder and giving him a nod before heading into the medpod in their place. How did they _do_ that? Is it some sort of specialist skill she’s never heard of?

And she still doesn’t know that he is one.

“Are you a specialist?” she asks as they enter the lab. Fitz looks up at the sound of her voice and immediately returns his attention to Coulson’s recovery report. It’s not at all like him to allow some strange agent to handle her this way, so she imagines he’s been informed. Likely the only person on board who didn’t know before Jemma did was Skye, though there’s still a chance, people are sometimes able to hear what’s said around them while comatose.

Triplett settles her on one of the stools before answering. “Yeah. Level six.”

“Level five,” she says weakly.

“Hey, pretty close.” His smile is no less attractive than before, but there’s something desperate about it.

“I’m fine,” she says, hoping to reassure him. “Really. It’s just … all a little much.” First their mission goes so utterly wrong, then Skye is shot, and now she’s met her bloody soulmate. She wishes things would simply slow down for a moment or two.

“You want me to go?” he asks.

She blinks, struck dumb by the question, and meets his earnest expression for long seconds before bending forward to rest her head in her hands. It’s a brief relief, as she knows he’s still standing above her, probably wondering how he ended up with a mental case for a soulmate.

She sits up so suddenly he stares, wide-eyed. “How are you so perfect?” she demands. “I’ve _completely_ bollocksed this up - I didn’t realize I’d met my own _soulmate_ \- and you just keep smiling like you don’t even _care_ and you say the right things and _do_ the right things and- and-” She doesn’t even know what else but there _must_ be more.

When she doesn’t pick up the thread of her thoughts, he says, “I _don’t_ care, for one.”

“Well you _should_ ,” she says weakly. It’s only practical. What’s the rest of their lives going to look like when the start is _this_? She crosses her arms over her chest and looks away from him, only to find Fitz has disappeared. Fled, most likely. Lord, she really has made a mess of things.

“Why?” he asks. He leans a hand against the table beside her and something about that posture shows off the muscles of his arm as well as the definition hidden beneath his shirt. He’s very attractive, her soulmate.

“Because!” she says, feeling it’s a perfectly valid argument under the circumstances - and because Fitz isn’t present to call her to task for making the argument she’s so often refused to respect coming from others.

“Yeah,” he says, “do you know how most specialists meet their soulmates? Eight out of ten meet them in the field. Four of those eight while undercover. One out of every two specialists meets their soulmate while playing them or while being played. I’m thinking I’m doing pretty well here. You’re SHIELD, so that’s covered. You’re smart and smoking hot and generous. Yeah, someone’s life is on the line but - and do _not_ take this the wrong way because I definitely want that girl in there to live - it’s not either of us. This is way better than I ever expected.”

Well, when he puts it that way…

Of _course_ she’s thought of horrible ways to meet her soulmate, but all of those came to her before she got her timer. She imagined embarrassing meetings involving spilled coffee and split pants and days she’d gone out without showering. Somehow it never crossed her mind, once entering SHIELD, that she might meet her soulmate under such dangerous circumstances.

“Although,” he says, considering, “I guess there is _one_ thing I’d always kind of expected from that first meeting, even if you had turned out to be evil.”

“What?” she asks, both fearful and eager to set it to rights, if possible.

His mouth twists in that smile again and this time it’s mildly devious - and all the more attractive for it, but there’s not much time to consider that because in the same second he’s swooping in to kiss her. His hand is cupping her cheek and she can just feel the warmth of his thighs brushing up against her knees and his lips are moving devastatingly slowly over hers, as though he has all the time in the world to do to her what he pleases, and she feels certain if he keeps it up, she’ll melt into a puddle on the floor.

She doesn’t though, as he ends the kiss after - seconds? minutes? hours? she truly doesn’t know.

“There we go,” he says into the scant space between them. She can taste his breath on her tongue and wants very much to return to tasting more. “Now it’s perfect.”

There’s still Skye as well as the embarrassment Jemma will likely carry to her grave but, truth be told, she rather agrees with him.

 


End file.
